Greg, cc Prof Sachs and list (I have seen your second note on this Science
editorial, but it doesn't change anything below)
1. I generally support your remarks. Like your favorites, biochar did
not even warrant one single mention. BECCS and Direct Air Capture were in
there - but only to explain why they were not covered. How about
afforestation and reforestation - the main approach favored by Jim Hansen? On
p 183 there is a table with this for the US position (emphasis added):
"Exclude forest carbon sink: Focus on reducing energy system CO2, as this is
the pivotal transition task and carbon sink behavior is poorly understood."
[RWL1: So removing CO2 was simply assumed to be non-pivotal. The Royal
Society apparently didn't know what they were talking about when they listed
afforestation as being well understood and +ready to go. REDD is well underway.
But I think there was a different real explanation - which immediately
followed this above. The authors at E3 of this section said this (emphasis
again added):
2. "Modeling Approach
The scenarios were developed using Pathways, a granular bottom-up
energy balance model, with
80 energy demand subsectors and 20 energy supply pathways, modeled separately
in each of the
nine U.S. census regions. Pathways incorporates a stock rollover model, which
makes stock additions
and retirements in annual time steps, and an hourly electricity dispatch model.
The analysis also used
the global integrated assessment model GCAM to develop resource assumptions for
domestic biomass
use in the U.S. The scenario results shown here are preliminary. "
[RWL2. The report sponsors (Jeffrey Sachs, etc) presumably chose the
best authors they could find given the money on hand. E3 won this competition
for the US chapter, and undoubtedly pre-announced they would be using
"Pathways" - which was developed and is probably pretty good at energy
modeling. This paragraph makes no claim that they know how to model CDR
approaches. So we should not expect them to generate any new climate
(especially CDR-relevant) model - if they were not paid to do so. I think we
should just conclude there was never any serious attempt to look at CDR, by
anyone involved. And try to be constructive by doing the next.
3. The opening pages say this:
"To further this discussion we invite comments and suggestions for
improvement on this interim 2014 report before August 15, 2014."
I have found no obvious receipt address. So I include Prof. Sachs as
the chair. My "suggestion for improvement" to all the sponsors is to remove
all mention of CDR (here called NETs = Negative Emission Technologies) and
replace with a sentence something like this:
" This report does not deal at all with the area of Geoengineering -
neither Solar Radiation Management nor Carbon Dioxide Removal. To cover the
latter, we include several appendices, limited to 3 pages each, authored by
proponent organizations of each CDR/NET that wished to respond. Each was asked
to compare the various CDR approaches."
I see no author of this present draft able to credibly take on the
important assignment of telling Secretary Ban Ki-Moon anything at all valuable
on CDR. You don't have to believe what they say, but you should certainly
give a voice to people who have been involved for years in subjects like CDR,
when your report itself shows your proposed actions are inadequate.
Thoughts?
Ron
On Jul 8, 2014, at 10:24 PM, Greg Rau <[email protected]> wrote:
> Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP) Presents Interim Report to UN
> Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon
>
> STUDY CHARTS PATH TO LOW CARBON IN MAJOR EMITTING COUNTRIES
>
> First Global Cooperative Effort Aims to Support UN Climate Talks
> "A report for the United Nations released today shows how the major emitting
> countries can cut their carbon emissions by mid-century in order to prevent
> dangerous climate change. The report, produced cooperatively by leading
> research institutes in 15 countries, is the first global cooperative program
> to identify practical pathways to a low-carbon economy by 2050. The Deep
> Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP) interim report will be presented in a
> briefing today to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and tomorrow/the day
> after to the French government, as host of the 2015 United Nations Framework
> Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) climate conference. The interim report
> supports the UN Climate Summit on September 23, 2014. The full DDPP report
> will be presented in the spring of 2015."
> Report here
> http://unsdsn.org/what-we-do/deep-decarbonization-pathways/
>
> From the Executive Summary:
> "Directed technological change should not be conceived as picking winners,
> but as making sure the market has enough winners to pick from to achieve
> cost-effective low-carbon outcomes."
>
> GR - Refreshing. If only it were practiced. Speaking of which, here's the
> extent of their negative emissions statement in the full report:
>
> "Many low-carbon scenarios, including some in IPCC AR5, project an
> "overshooting" of the carbon budget in the first half of the 21st century,
> which must then be offset through net negative emissions in the second half
> of the century. The popular placeholder for net negative emissions is the
> integration of biomass energy (BE) with CCS, both as technologies for
> electricity generation and biofuel production. BECCS combines the dual
> challenge of large-scale biomass production and large-scale storage of CO2.
> The feasibility of each component of BECCS is uncertain, and their
> combination is therefore even less certain at this stage.
> An alternative approach for net negative emissions would be the direct air
> capture of CO2 followed by geological storage. Air capture refers to
> technologies that extract CO2 from the atmosphere at the ambient
> concentration of CO2 (i.e. 400 ppm). The advantage of direct air capture is
> that it can be done anywhere without the need for transport of the CO2 to a
> storage site. A disadvantage is that the process of isolating and removing
> the CO2 from air at low ambient concentrations is technically challenging,
> currently expensive, and unproven at scale."
>
> GR - Translation: "We're not going to pick winners, but we're going to make
> the CDR list so small and unlikely that we can ignore it. Meantime, we've
> picked that winning approach - CO2 emissions reduction - to save the planet."
>
>
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "geoengineering" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to [email protected].
> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
